


This Is Fact Not Fiction

by zauberer_sirin



Category: Suzumiya Haruhi Series
Genre: Canon - Movie, Gen, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-11-18
Updated: 2010-11-18
Packaged: 2017-10-18 17:43:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/191527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zauberer_sirin/pseuds/zauberer_sirin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Haruhi worries about Kyon. Itsuki comforts her. It's all part of his job, really.</i> Set during the film. Written in November 2010.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Is Fact Not Fiction

  
Things are maybe simpler than he's been led to believe.

He catches her staring at the name plaque outside the room. Kyon's actual and proper name and Itsuki imagines that she finds it odd and alarming to be thinking about the boy as anything else than plain _Kyon_. Itsuki himself sometimes falls into the trap (and negligence) of forgetting that he is something different. That Haruhi is not just plain Haruhi, a girl standing outside a hospital room worrying about the boy she likes.

But then again maybe it's all a lot simpler.

All those theories, all those plans, all that Damage Control, and bloody Asahina and bloody Nagato insisting on making his life much harder (or, perhaps, easier, but still, it's uncomfortable to rely on outside elements even if convenient) maybe they are all wrong – all of them, starting with his bosses, with the whole Agency, and of course himself.

Looking at Haruhi now, walking up to Haruhi now, it's rather impossible to believe.

(Itsuki has his own, selfish reasons – he always has, doesn't he? that kind of self-deprecation is meant to be cool, goes the voice in his head, but that's not why he does it – for rebelling against the principle of “the thing” when the word _mission_ creeps painfully back into his thoughts)

In any case there's something about how serious and small Haruhi looks now that Itsuki just can't stand.

`He is going to be just fine. You know that.´

His voice surprises her. She turns around and there's already that expression on her face – that fearless, stubborn frown.

`Of course I do! Kyon is too stupid to really injure himself. But I have to do this, don't I? As your leader. It's my responsibility. A bother but I have to stay here.´

He gives Haruhi a condescending smirk. He doesn't feel much like playing his role tonight but he doesn't quite know how to slip out of it. His superiors send him a message: keep an eye on Suzumiya Haruhi until Kyon recovers. Itsuki wants to believe he would have done this anyway; he wants to believe “ _friendship_ ” is not something entirely attached to his job prescription.

`Give me some money,´ Haruhi says. `I want a soft drink. You brought the club's funds, of course. For snacks. Right?´

Snacks? That probably means she intends on spending the night here. Itsuki searches his pockets. Club funds indeed.

  
*

`You've brought a sleeping bag?´

Haruhi looks at him with murderous intent. His bad.

Seeing the teenage girl clutching at her red sleeping bag in the hallway of the hospital makes Itsuki's heart ache a little.

  
*

  
`Here,´ he hands Haruhi a plastic cup.

`Hot chocolate?´

Itsuki nods. He doesn't want to indulge her with something with too much sugar or bubbles or artificial additives. Definitely not with caffeine. A worried Haruhi Suzumiya is bad enough, a restless one would put the whole world at risk, no doubt.

They sit on the plastic chairs outside Kyon's room. He can almost see Haruhi grow a bit older in front of his eyes. It's not something necessarily bad.

 _Jobs end_ , he thinks. He could be trying to handle Closed Spaces the rest of his life but he's too smart to ignore the practicalities; what are his superiors thinking will happen? That Itsuki should follow Haruhi and Kyon into college? Follow _whom_? One cannot con his way into people's lives – except apparently _he_ can. There is this bit of every weekday: between the end of classes and the moment he opens the door of the club. He pretends he is a regular student going to his after-class activities. He imagines he is just like Kyon and Haruhi. He pretends and yet that bit is not a lie.

`Hey, Koizumi.´

`Yes?´

`Did you really mean it? When you said that Kyon was going to be fine for sure?´

Haruhi is making a face that – well, Itsuki is sure she hasn't let many people see that kind of face, not recently anyway (maybe when she was a little kid and maybe if she ever was a normal little kid, which Itsuki had a hard time imagining, anyway), and he is secretly glad she hasn't because it's the kind of face that makes even people like Itsuki want to promise her everything. Want to tell her everything is going to be all right with all the conviction in the world.

(and in any case the alternative is just unthinkable: this is after all part of a plan – Kyon is going to be okay, there can be not even a hint of a doubt about that, Itsuki simply refuses to contemplate any other possibility; the terms he uses now, damn, they are almost personal, he is out of order and not thinking about interplanetary safety at all)

`Of course,´ he tells her. `Completely. I would never lie to the President of the S.O.S. Brigade.´

Haruhi's face lights up.

`No, of course you wouldn't. That would be punishable.´

He smiles a robot smile. There are these things his body can do by default, without second-guessing. It's been well-trained. Haruhi stands up, looking at the door of the room with determination, lingering on, giving herself a couple of seconds to gather some courage.

(maybe things are _so unexceptional_ : a girl who likes a boy)

This bit is not a lie:

` _Miss President_?´ He calls out, sweetly mocking.

`Uh?´

`The chocolate. I didn't buy it with club funds. It was my treat.´

Haruhi looks at him as if he had grown a second head. She looks awkward and a bit flushed, not knowing how to read that. Itsuki feels completely silly and more than a little unprofessional right now.

`Eh... thanks.´

  
*

  
He waits until Haruhi is asleep (he's been pretending to flip through some kind of interior design magazine for the last twenty minutes) to check his cell phone.

Apparently and insert big sigh of relief here the world is safe so far tonight. That probably means he's done a good job. The cold stone truth of what he will write on his report: “containing the Haruhi Suzumiya problem” is closest to the purpose than _comforting a friend_. That has no value in Itsuki's world. Even if sometimes he forgets Koizumi is not his real name.

He looks at Kyon, peacefully unconscious and seemingly ordinary.

Haruhi's sleeping bag on the floor, peeking out by the side of the bed, Itsuki can see it from here. He sits back on the comfortable chair ( _friends and family_ , _visits_ , those were the kind of words nurses used, enough to shame Itsuki into deceitful silence and everybody assumed...) and switches off his phone.

No more work for tonight.

Something far simpler.


End file.
